moved

yeah, like it says, i've moved to joeloholic.wordpress.com...

big thanks to ivy for uh, facilitating the change and being instrumental in the setting up and subsequent pimping of new web page. joel muchly appreciates.

all past entries, comments and images have miraculously been transferred over, so we're all good!

1984

1984 by George Orwell was a great book that I enjoyed while I was serving in National Service, where I had developed a voracious appetite for books, often sneaking in a ziplocked paperback into my poncho pouch whenever I was out in the field.


I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I'll never forget the morning I finished reading it - after a hard night's bike training - lying in bed with the sun rising in the horizon, its warm glow caressing my face. I wasn't really in my comfy bed - I was Winston in the torture chamber, and I knew that I had hope beyond hope in myself that I wouldn't give in to the torture, wouldn't forsake my own awareness for mindless monotonic mediocre... existence.


Unfazed and horribly optimistic even as Winston's tribulations wore on, I read the entire torture sequence in 1984 that morning, hoping beyond hope - knowing, even - that Winston would somehow find a way to elude his captors and somehow escape to... somewhere?


When Winston gave in to torture I felt sick at my own betrayal, felt disgusted at my own defeat. I turned my back to the sleeping people around, my face to the sun in the horizon, and wept while no one could see.

joel 2007

hey. i'm back. well, kinda.

not really.

but let me explain, o blog of mine. i used to write this for myself, mostly, just as an outlet for whatever stray thoughts lay in this wayward mind. later on, this blog was a vehicle for me to practise my writing, just for the heck of it. it however came to a point last year where i realized i didn't have much to say, or had a lot of things to say but lacked the words, or the time, to say them. and then after a while i wondered if these were worth putting down onto paper anyway.

whatever the case, i haven't blogged proper in a year, and though i don't promise to begin now, i realize that i once did have quite an intimate relationship with joeloholics anonymous, and nurtured and tended to it often.

why did this happen? perhaps because for a time, i stopped writing for myself. and in that time, perhaps forgot why i set this up in the first place.

it's just high time that joeloholics anonymous reverted to what it was before - a conversation with myself stretched over months and years. yeah, me, myself and i. again. i've forgotten how much pouring my soul into this has actually helped me over the years, and how much perspective it has given me.

i'm gonna be hella busy the next coupla weeks. don't know when i'll have my next entry here. but it matters not.

whatever. i blog again today.

second year has so far... been not as fluffy as i would've liked, but i'm hanging in here. i'm enjoying my classes greatly... mostly. my apologies for being slightly incoherent - it's 4am.

and if anyone besides me is actually reading this, thanks for stopping by.

be safe, and happy. and your families too.

stereotypes

People make it sound like stereotypes are bad.

They aren't - they are mental shortcuts that help us make quick decisions, based on our judgement and prior experience; our schemas. When you're out in the city on a dark Saturday night, and you think about taking a shortcut through a creepy, dark alley... you stop yourself, because the stereotypical dark alley might have a robber lurking within, and no one would see or hear you if you were attacked there. You don't know enough information to be sure whether there's a thug with a knife in the dark alley, but your past experience fills in the gaps of what you don't know, and you decide wisely not to walk through the alley. Stereotypes save lives.

What is bad is when stereotypes - negative ones - persist in light of a cornucopia of readily available information. The internet, free newspapers, the mass media - take a look at them and you have information. It might be accurate, or it might not, but you've got it. Yet stereotypes persist.

Al-Qaeda is Sunni.
Saddam is Sunni.
Therefore, they are chummy buddies and Saddam was responsible for 911, which is full justification to bomb the heck out of Iraq and force him into hiding in a hole in the ground which he was dug out of and now he's going to die.

By the very same line of reasoning,

The IRA are Catholic.
The mafia are Catholic.
I am Catholic, which makes me an Irish-Italian mafia-terrorist even though I am a Singaporean Peranakan Chinese 2nd year university student in Toronto.

See, it shouldn't make sense, but it does. Because we are unfortunately wired to depend on stereotypes and other mental shortcuts to survive. You can't get rid of stereotypes, but we can start by getting rid of our own ignorance so we don't have to depend on stereotypes and other mental shortcuts as much.

the times you get hurt

caffeine. damn you. coffee at eight pm has kept be up for the last eight hours, initially tremendously productive and working at my notes at breathtaking speed, then wearing me out faster than i would have liked.

and now ive got barely three more hours til daylight.

and im still in this state, frightfully awake even though thanks to my light workout just now while watching the lakers - rockets game my muscles are slightly aching.

even alcohol - i had some whisky n coke just now, sadly, the last of my dads whisky - cant undo this effect. potency of caffeine has perhaps been augmented by long absence of drinking any coffee at all, not counting diluted messed up things that pass off for coffee in city. what i wouldnt give for a kopi-peng right now, though, my current temporary insomnia notwithstanding.

so i lie here in my bed, my only companion that little voice in my head, my only form of expression these letters and words that are borne onto the keyboard right as i think them.

...

i would like to think right now, since im in the mood for it, about the times ive been hurt badly in my life. about the emotional setbacks. why? perhaps because only by looking down at the valley below you do you appreciate the fact that you stand now on higher ground. but maybe i just want to. and i cant sleep anyway.

i believe that i am the cause for a lot of the times i am hurt by people. or at least part of the cause. because i believe too much in people, perhaps. perhaps because i believe in the goodness that lies inside my fellow man's heart.

more than once this has taught people to take me for granted. and as much as i was angry at these people at the time, i was as much as fault as they were for my tears, because of my own stupidity and foolishness - my naivete if you may.

for two years now i have known that lesson - but maybe it is only recently that i have come to terms with the true meaning of it. you dont have to hide away from yourself to hide yourself from people, to protect that raw inner core that has been shredded too many times by people who couldnt care less, or didnt know better.

the first year which i blogged properly - 2005 - my posts were filled with anger and pain. i believe that my wounds are healed now, and while i do feel a tinge of regret at how things have turned out, i dont have time for that anymore.

i have... changed a lot in recent times. i think more about the future, and how i must prepare myself for it. i dont know. i think im perhaps less shallow than the man i tried to be two years ago... i cant be that man, no matter how i try.

good night. i dont think i can sleep, but ill try. out of desperation.

rambles

musings.

ive not been able to sleep well lately, i dont know why too.

perhaps its the exam stress, though i am not really behind very much on my work. perhaps fact that i havent left the house since saturday, or rather havent really spent much time out of my room even, studying all the while for the last few days.

i know its not healthy. yes.

i suppose i have been bothered by a lot of things lately, things one might say i dont have business getting involved in. those things are hopefully settled now, or rather, ive stopped caring about. so thats all good.

i remember the early days of this blog when i was back in singapore where i would do what i am doing now, type into this and pour out my mind into this, with honesty and without pretense, in the wee small hours of the morning.

back then, many a night was spent awake, with just me and my ps2, and the cold, dark silence outside, with everyone asleep except me. and my winning eleven team or my dynasty warrior character of course.

...


that aside, ive taken a course this term on organizational behaviour, and this has honestly been the best, most educational course i have ever had in my entire life. yes, the professor is barely 30 and he really makes an already interesting subject ever more interesting with all these in-class exercises and stuff.

ive learned a lot from these in class exercises - the negotiation one, an integrated group-negotiation exercise, a group decision making exercise... and the like. ive come to understand a lot better how people think, and finally know the basics of how to apply what i learned in psy100 into real life. much fun.

...

reflecting upon this however i realize some things about myself and my behaviour that perhaps i had not thought of before. i was doing notes for my exam today on leadership, a subject that has fascinated me very much. i realize that i am not truly inept at being a leader. i may have not been 'good enough' for ocs - twice - but that just means that perhaps a military style leadership position does not suit me... or does it?

i know im rambling btw but what can i do, and what can you, for that matter?

...

Joeloholics Digest Vol 9: WHEN HOMELESS PEOPLE ATTACK!

My back is fine now. I finally have put some links up on here, but since I updated this and upgraded to blogger beta, I lost track of my tagboard and most of the old links I had, so if I linked you / was supposed to link you, my bad. I really haven't had the time to sit here and write much anyway, not in the past few months, and things've been going so fast (oh no being vague again) as usual.

It's a surprisingly warm Thursday night, if wet, and I'm right in the middle of my big projects for my classes. School this year has been hectic, for sure, but the classes have been a lot more intriguing than they were last year, due perhaps in part to the relatively smaller classes. As a result I've been a lot more active in classes this year, especially in discussions and stuff, as opposed to the quiet, behind-the-scenes stealthy kind of guy I was last year.

I'm not sure which one is me, to be honest, since I usually vacillate between being quieter than the average person... and being a lot more loud, in-your-face and uh, out there than most people are, though the latter is a lot rarer for me, and only comes out due to circumstance.

I will try to write here more, since I do not wish to lose my ability to write. Already I find myself misspelling stuff in my notes, and wondering how many S's there are in "weaknesses" while I was doing a SWOT analysis just now was a wake-up call.



Anyway.

Today while on the subway to school I was attacked by a crazy homeless guy.

I was sitting in the carriage, reading the metro (Toronto free newspaper which is surprisingly good) when this tanned, ambiguously Asian and very, very unshaven man in his 30s or 40s walked in, whispering and mumbling unintelligible gibberish to himself, and sat on the seat facing me horizontally.

Aware of the man's presence, disturbed but yet unwilling to move away from my seat and thus concede that I was in fact disturbed, I continued reading the metro and attempted to ignore the man. Unfortunately, as the train moved along its path, the man's murmurings got louder, and they sounded increasingly agitated.

He then brushed my shoulder and murmured something to the effect of "Hey you talking to me? What you say to me?" To which I replied, as calm as I could, that I did not say anything, and I continued reading my paper.

This, however, seemed to agitate the man further, and it was not long after I turned away and began to read the metro again that his murmurings grew more and more loud, and angrier still. He then began to start shoving me and punching me on my shoulder, with increasing strength, several times - which I ignored, trying to keep a steely disposition all the while.

It was after a few shoves, however, that the man slammed his fist on the back of my seat hard enough so that the entire carriage had heard, and was staring at him and me. I turned to the man in shock, and he asked me the same question he had asked me before, with even more menace and anger than he had the last time, "Are you saying something to me?"

I once more said that I wasn't, and, unable to ignore danger and a potential fistfight, I picked up my bag and walked to the nearest subway doors, where I stood waiting for the next station - Old Mill. When the train finally reached the Old Mill station, which has a subway platform overlooking the Humber River several dozen feet below, I got off - but couldn't resist looking at the crazed man in the face, in an attempt to "read" him.

This, however, drove the man totally nuts and as the subway doors closed behind me, he stood up and started gesticulating wildly at me, while smashing his fists on the train's window panels, while behind him, bewildered elderly women and their young grand children watched.

It took a lot of willpower to not show him the bird, or to bang on the window back and yell something at my assailant, but I somehow managed to turn around and just look at the beautiful flowing river below me, which I continued looking at until the train left the station.



I've seen my share of crazies, in Singapore and Toronto both, but this is the first time I have been... in such contact with one of them. Pris said that you don't see this kinda thing in Singapore, to which I don't exactly agree with. Within cities such as Toronto and Singapore lie such powerfully stark dualities; here we have Spadina, what one of my professors last year described "the dark underbelly of capitalism", home - if you would call it that - to too many homeless people, beggars, crackheads and the like, and yet barely 15 minutes away lies businessey Bay Street, with trendy, chic Queen St even nearer.

Back in Singapore, you don't have to stray too far from the beauty and cleanliness of the city to see its own darker side. The infamous lorongs of Geylang lie sandwiched between the lovely downtown's Singapore's eastern borders and the gorgeously scenic East Coast area. The duality in Singapore is, however, most stark on Orchard Road itself. Right in the heart of the city's lively entertainment district, its immaculately clean Orchard Road stretch, with the majestic maroon twin Takashimaya towers at its core, we can see this. You barely have to walk five minutes from Orchard's subway exit to reach Orchard Towers, a highrise den of prostitution and promiscuity, nestled amidst embassies, corporate office buildings, cinemas and the like. Need I even mention Desker? Joo Chiat?

London was the same. Vancouver even more so. And so, I feel, is Hong Kong.

Big cities attract the good - and the very worst, perhaps - that humanity has. For every sharply dressed go-getter in a Harry Rosen suit standing on Bay Street, there is a homeless man waking up from a daze on a street corner at noon, absently realizing that whatever money he had had been invested the night before in the empty bottle of cheap alcohol that lay behind him, and in the burned out ash remains of the spliff that stained the pavement not far from where he now lies. Yin and Yang, perhaps.

I have been pondering about this for too long; it's already 0330 hrs and I've gotta be up in less than six hours. I haven't slept well at all lately.

Good night.

bedridden again

Yes, like the title says, I got hurt again. This time, because of an even dumber reason.

On Monday the 23rd, having left my damned-to-hell economics online homework (due Monday morning) until Sunday night, resulting in horrific zombie-like mad rush to finish it before I was conquered by slumber the night before, I woke up at nine-thirty with exactly half an hour's time for me to get ready, eat, wash up, grab the keys and hop into the Dad's camry to speed off onto the QEW to school.


Twenty-five minutes later, still needing to brush my teeth, having scarfed down a deceptively filling bagel-with-the-works and a big glass of orange juice while rapidly wearing my clothes, I realized I was running a bit late.

Still half dressed, I bent down to the foot of my bed, stooped over without my knees bent, and rummaged at the little pile of textbooks, files and misc. stationery lying there, fervently throwing various items into my backpack.

It was then that I suffered a mild coughing fit, and for a few seconds was wracked with uh, coughs. But somehow, one of the cough-induced convulsions pulled one of my muscles while I was bent over so, and I felt a bolt of pain jolt up my back, and my knees lost their strength.

I tried keeping myself upright, but even more pain tore through me. I eventually managed to maneuver myself to the bed where I lay on my side in a fetal position, the only position which didn't cause inordinate amounts of pain to explode through me. There I lay moaning embarrassingly for much of Monday, while my Mum asked me why I "wanted to be so clumsy".


It has been four days since and I have, for the most part, been lying in my bed. The pain has largely subsided - especially after I went to the hospital yesterday and got a morphine jab, which I am thankful for, not so much however for the inch-wide bruise caused by the inept-if-friendly Filipino nurse - and today, for the first time since I got hurt, I have been able to get by relatively painlessly without having to resort to the plethora of painkillers of various strengths that lie on the bedside table to my right. I have even walked down the stairs today.

I understand that I haven't blogged consistently. I haven't, for various reasons, all of which are good.

I do write this entry now, however, for an even better reason. I am tired of explaining to people that I got hurt by "bending down", "picking up my bag" or "coughing".